Great Dog Stories (25 page)

Most people never run far enough on their
first wind to find out they’ve got a second.

W
ILLIAM
J
AMES

T
here were certain things that riled up my dog Gracie. Things that either tempted her or bugged her so much that she’d jump up from whatever she was doing (usually napping) and bark her head off and give chase. Deer and UPS trucks topped her list. Every dog has its own particular triggers that set off such reactions.

With Pepper the Beagle from Pennsylvania it was…Amish buggies.

Alex and his dog Pepper grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, which has one of the largest concentrations of Amish in America. The farmhouse Alex lived in was like an island in an ocean of cornfields. The two-lane asphalt highway in front of the house was as neatly combed down the middle as if Moses had raised his staff and parted the corn himself.

Compared to LA freeways, this was a road much,
much
less traveled. On a good day nine or ten Amish buggies would pass by, and it seemed this is what Pepper lived for. The Beagle would go nuts, barking, chasing, and nipping after the horse-drawn vehicles.

Alex told me Pepper didn’t bark at other cars or trucks. The Beagle wasn’t particularly interested in horses or other farm animals. No, Pepper had a thing for Amish buggies. Whether they bugged her or turned her on, these buggies were Pepper’s passion; perhaps stirred up by a repressed Beagle memory of a time when packs of prehistoric Beagles hunted down large, black, slow-moving dinosaurs. (Just a theory.)

To prevent Pepper from dragging home an Amish buggy and burying it on their property, Alex’s parents began to tie up Pepper in the backyard whenever a buggy approached. Pepper could still see out onto the road and whenever the buggies passed by, she would bark her brains out—with the plastic leash in between her teeth. The more she barked, the more her sharp teeth would cut against the leash. This is proof that dogs know how to multitask. After a season of chewing and barking she’d break through the leash and take off after the buggy. Alex reported that Pepper probably went through one leash for each of her 14 years with their family. As to why they didn’t buy a steel-chain leash, Alex shrugged, “The plastic ones were so much cheaper.”

No doubt, Pepper had a lifelong obsession with Amish buggies. They riled her up from puppyhood through canine AARP. She always barked at them. Always chased them with all her heart. She patiently chewed, year after year, through leash after leash, to pursue her passion.

That’s single-minded perseverance.

What are we willing to spend our whole life pursuing? And what goal ignites our passions such that we’re willing to chew through countless entanglements of an insanely busy life to reach them?

I’ve spent a lot of my adult life writing screenplays that don’t sell. I have chewed through years of disappointment and frustration in pursuit of my dream of having a major feature film produced—only to be stopped cold, dragged back into the yard, and leashed up again. And from my back-to-square-one position, I still have a painful view of all the Amish buggies passing me by, of missed opportunities and daily reports of others getting their films produced.

Yet year after year I persevere, I bark and chew and keep writing even when it hurts—because writing isn’t something I do; it’s who I am. It’s my passion. Until God shows me otherwise, it’s what I’ll do until the day I die.

What is your God-given passion? That something that can’t be superficially scraped off like frosting on a cake? What’s your Amish buggy? What do you pursue that is powerfully instinctive and primal; something you were born with; something God planted in the deepest part of you?

I believe we all have our Amish buggies.

Back in Old Testament times, Nehemiah had a passion to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem that had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians around 600 B.C. When Nehemiah (cupbearer to the King of Persia) returned to his ancestors’ homeland 150 years later to do what God put on his heart, he was met with opposition. He had finished most of the wall, but still had to hang the huge doors. His enemies conspired and sent him a message inviting him to a meeting. But Nehemiah didn’t take their bait. He knew they meant him harm. They sent the same passive-aggressive message four times and each time Nehemiah sent messengers with the same blunt response: “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?” (Nehemiah 6:3
NASB
).

Don’t waste my time. Don’t distract me from my heart’s goal.

Don’t get between me and my Amish buggy!

Nehemiah’s enemies continued to put up more obstacles between him and the completion of the wall—but Nehemiah chewed right through them with Beagle-like persistence. The wall was completed in 52 days. It was an externalization of a passion, something quantifiable, like a chewed-up leash and a dog running after an Amish buggy.

But beneath the surface of external things, there is a deeper underlying internal passion that must be pursued no matter how busy we are, how tied down we are, whether young or old, sick or healthy, rich or poor. In 1 Timothy 6:11 we are told to “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.”

Can you imagine what might happen if you pursued God and these God-given qualities with the same passion and perseverance that Pepper pursued her Amish buggies?

Nehemiah did.

Here’s a little peek behind the scenes of the building project. It wasn’t just a one-man job. Nehemiah also got a little help along the way! In Nehemiah 6:9 (
NKJV
) we hear him pray, “Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands.” And when the wall was completed in an impossibly short 52 days, Nehemiah lifted the curtain to reveal Who helped him achieve his heart’s goal. (Hint: The same One who planted it there.) Nehemiah 6:16 (
NASB
) tells it like it is: “When all our enemies heard of [the completion of the wall], and all the nations surrounding us saw it, they lost their confidence; for they recognized that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God.”

What if you took after Nehemiah and pursued your heart’s passion and the God who planted it there—at the same time?

Katie

Fall seven times, stand up eight.

J
APANESE
P
ROVERB

K
atie is a beautiful little border collie that Duane and Cher Jost adopted from the pound. At first she was timid and cautious, but her family poured love on her and she opened up her heart to them. Katie is a very friendly dog and quickly became a favorite in their beautiful country neighborhood. She had an early morning routine of going across the street and greeting everyone as they went off to work or school. They all happily greeted her too and then lovingly shooed her back home.

One day a neighbor noticed Katie in her front yard, barking and jumping around as if she were on a mission. From her front door, the neighbor greeted Katie. Then she asked the dog to go home. Katie wouldn’t budge. She kept persisting in whatever mission she was on. Finally the neighbor stepped outside to shoo Katie away. But the moment she turned back to the house, Katie started insisting again. This made the neighbor realize there might be something more to Katie’s behavior. She started walking toward her barn. Katie ran circles around her and then darted toward the corral area. The neighbor suddenly noticed a newborn foal out by the road’s edge. The foal had rolled under the fencing and was lying outside the corral area. Without help, the newborn could have died. But thanks to Katie’s persistence, the neighbor found him and took care of him, and he was fine.

That day, Katie was hailed as the neighborhood hero. Even though she was already loved, she got even more genuine attention from the neighborhood folks from then on.

Katie’s persistence saved the foal’s life, but only because the neighbor responded. There was a choice involved. In my life, my doctor is persistent in giving me the right medications for my medical conditions. But if I chose not to take his advice, I could very possibly die. When I was having heart trouble my husband, Steve, was persistent in taking me to the doctor to be checked out. I told him I didn’t have time to go to the doctor, but he insisted. The next day I had a quadruple heart bypass. Had Steve and my doctor not been persistent I would not be writing this story.